Prolonged application (> 20 minutes) of LV on muscles or tendons is known to reduce maximal isometric strength. However, the effect of short vibration durations (< 6 minutes) is still unknown. In fourteen participants, the changes in maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) were measured after 1, 3, and 6 minutes of rest (CONT) or local vibration (LV) over the quadricipital tendon (frequency: 100 Hz; amplitude: 0.5mm). Before and after each condition, the amplitude of the twitch induced by a 100 Hz potentiated electrical doublet (PDPOT), relative electromyographic activity of the vastus medialis and rectus femoris muscle during the MVIC (RMSMVIC.M-1), the torque developed 50 ms after the onset of contraction (T50) and the voluntary activation level (VAL) were evaluated. None of the three LV durations significantly changed MVIC compared with the control condition (p = .379). Indices of central (i.e., VAL, T50, RMSMVIC.M-1) and peripheral (PDPOT) fatigue were unaffected (p > .147). In conclusion, a short duration of LV (<6min) on a voluminous muscle group, does not impair maximal force production nor induce any central or peripherical fatigue.

Purpose: While resultant maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) is commonly used to assess muscular performance, the simultaneous activation of antagonist muscles could dramatically underestimate the strength of the agonist muscles. While quantification of antagonist torque has been performed in plantar- (PF) and dorsi-flexion (DF) joint in isometric conditions, it has yet to be determined in anisometric (concentric and eccentric) conditions. Methods: The experiment was performed in 9 participants through 2 sessions (reliability). The MVCs in DF and PF were measured in isometric, concentric and eccentric conditions (10°.s^-1). Electromyographic (EMG) activities from the soleus, gastrocnemius medialis and lateralis, and tibialis anterior muscles were simultaneously recorded. The EMG biofeedback method was used to quantify antagonist torque, where participants were asked to maintain a level of EMG activity, corresponding to antagonist EMG activity and related to the muscle contraction type, according to a visual EMG bio-feedback displayed on a screen. Results: Resultant torque significantly underestimated agonist torque in DF MVC (30-65%) and to a lesser extent in PF MVC (3%). Triceps surae antagonist torque was significantly modified with muscle contraction type, showing higher antagonist torque in isometric (29 Nm) than eccentric (23 Nm, p < 0.001) and concentric (14 Nm, p < 0.001) conditions and resulting in modification of the DF MVC torque-velocity shape. The difference between DF eccentric and concentric MVC was attenuated when considered agonist torque (12%) rather than resultant torque (45%). Conclusion: Estimation of the antagonist torque in isometric or anisometric condition brings new insights to assessment of muscular performance and could result in costly misinterpretation in strength training and/or rehabilitation programs.

We point out that field equations of general relativity are implied by a maximal force given by c⁴/4G, analogous to the way that special relativity is implied by a maximal speed given by c. We present some of the arguments for this equivalence. The maxi-mal force naturally plays the role of an elastic constant for space-time. Implications of the maximal force for gravitational wave measurements, cosmology and black holes are highlighted. Quantum aspects of the maximal force are discussed.

Background: The rate of force development (RFD) plays a pivotal role not only in preventing falls but also in ensuring successful completion of many functional tasks that demand swift muscle power rather than prolonged strength. Despite its importance, there is limited compre-hensive research on the relationship between RFD and walking speed, especially in older adults with Sarcopenic Obesity (SO). Objective: to investigate the influence of obesity on neuromuscular markers in older adults with SO and to assess the relationship between neuromuscular markers and gait speed in older adults with SO. Methods: a cohort of 42 participants was categorized based on their BMI into two groups: the sarcopenic non-obese group (CG, n=22; age=81.13±4.02; BMI=25.13±3.35) and the sarcopenic obese group (SOG, n=20; age=77.71±2.95; BMI=34.46±3.25). Gait speed was measured using a 10-meter test. Additionally, the isometric strength of the plantar flexor muscles was assessed during maximal voluntary contractions. Absolute Peak force (aPeak, N) were documented at intervals of 50 ms (a50, N), 100 ms (a100, N), and 200 ms (a200, N), subsequently normalized to body mass (r50, r100, r200, N). The RFD was derived in two phases: from the start of the contraction to 50 ms (RFD50-100) and from 100 to 200 ms (RFD100-200) and calculated from the linear slop of the force – time curve (Δ force/Δ time). Conclusion: Obesity negatively impacts neuromuscular markers in older adults. Notably, RFD emerges as the dominant factor influencing gait speed, accounting for an impressive 51% of its variability, far surpassing the impact of relative peak force. This underscores the imperative of evaluating neuromuscular health in older adults with SO to provide insights into mobility out-comes.

In the paper, a study of the performance of unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), establishes numerical simulation model of the chassis system by three-dimensional software and finite element analysis software. Based on the numerical modelling and analysis, the work focuses on study of the strength and stiffness of the vehicle's chassis and researched the distribution of stress and deformation under the extremal condition. The paper also presents an autopilot design with new cascade control system for an autonomous motion of an unmanned ground vehicle based on Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) and Feed-Forward (FF) control. The PID-FF controller is a part of dedicated for presented UGV used in a hybrid control system for precise control and stabilization, necessary to increase the vehicle motion stability and maneuvers precision. The hybrid PID-FF control system proposed for the ground vehicle model gives a satisfactory quality of control, while maintaining the simplicity of the control system. Presented tests performed in area of mechanical design and control analysis gives good results and proves usefulness of designed unmanned device.

This paper proposes a multi-terminal adaptive collaborative operation method to solve the problem of unstable internal force tracking in clamping and handling unknown objects by multi-terminal robots. In the proposed method, the internal command force changes the complex internal force control problem into an internal force tracking problem from multi-slave to master. Moreover, we develop an algorithm for multi-slave setups to estimate object stiffness and motion uncertainty in the direction of the internal command force according to Lyapunov theory. Finally, the impedance control generates a reference trajectory for the multi-slave to maintain the desired internal force and track the master’s motion. Several experiments are conducted on a self-made robot equipped. The experimental results show that the oscillation amplitude of each slave end is less than 1 mm, the directional oscillation amplitude is less than 1 degree during the tracking of the desired commanded internal force. For objects with low stiffness, the error of the commanded internal force is less than 1 N (6%) per slave. The error in tracking the commanded internal force for objects with high stiffness is less than 2 N (8%). The results prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

The conceptual and theoretical backbones of symmetry/asymmetry detections or similarity/dissimilarity, and identity/unidentity study are automorphism or isomorphism respectively. However, the development of equations and methods for symmetry/asymmetry detections, similarity/dissimilarity, and identity/unidentity measures deviates from these backbones. In this article, an equation was proposed for symmetry/asymmetry detections, similarity/dissimilarity, and identity/unidentity measures, and proved that its isoreflective pairs-points are functionally bijective and inverse. The proposal, called Kabirian-based optinalysis, is based on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of automorphism and isomorphism. The Kabirian-based optinalysis is also proven and characterized as invariant (robust) under translation (i.e., scaling and location shift), and rotation or reflection. Computing codes were written in python language for Kabirian-based optinalysis to serve as working codes for application and verification.

In this paper, an adaptive proportional and integral (PI) controller for speed control of electric drives is developed. The adaptive PI controller is designed based on model reference adaptive identification and the Lyapunov function so that the system stability can be proved. To identify the inertia, the viscous friction torque coefficient, and the load torque simultaneously and smoothly, sinusoidal speed reference is usually employed. A modified motion equation considering the low-pass filter for feedback speed and the Coulomb friction torque is introduced and the relationship between the identified parameters and their actual values are clarified. A high-precision digital simulation model is built based on MATLAB/Simulink. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulations under various conditions.

This study was designed for the first time to improve phenolic yield and antioxidant activity of ultrasonic-assisted extraction from Acer truncatum leaves (ATL) using response surface methodology, and phenolic composition in ATL extracted under the optimized condition were characterized by UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS. Solvent and extraction time were selected based on preliminary experiments, and a four-factors-three-levels central composite design was conducted to optimize solvent concentration (X₁), material-to-liquid ratio (X₂), ultrasonic temperature (X₃) and power (X₄) for an optimal total phenol yield (Y₁) and DPPH• antioxidant activity (Y₂). The results showed that the optimal combination was ethanol: water (v:v) 66.21%, material-to-liquid ratio 1:15.31 g/mL, ultrasonic temperature 60 °C, power 267.30 W, and time 30 min with three extractions, giving a maximal total phenol yield of 7593.62 mg gallic acid equivalent /100 g d.w. and a maximal DPPH• antioxidant activity of 74241.61 μmol Trolox equivalent/100 g d.w.. Furthermore, 22 phenolics were first identified in ATL extract obtained under the optimized conditions, indicating that gallates, gallotannins, quercetin, myricetin and chlorogenic acid derivatives were the main phenolic composition in ATL. What’s more, a gallotannins pathway existing in ATL from gallic acid to penta-O-galloyl-glucoside was interpreted. All these results provided practical information aiming at full utilization of phenolics in ATL, together with fundamental knowledge for further research.

In order to overcome the limitation of the traditional adaptive Unscented Kalman Filtering (UKF) algorithm in noise covariance estimation for statement and measurement, we propose a hybrid adaptive UKF algorithm based on combining Maximum a posteriori (MAP) criterion and Maximum likelihood (ML) criterion, in this paper. First, to prevent the actual noise covariance deviating from the true value which can lead to the state estimation error and arouse the filtering divergence, a real-time covariance matrices estimation algorithm based on hybrid MAP and ML is proposed for obtaining the statement and measurement noises covariance, respectively; and then, a balance equation the two kinds of covariance matrix is structured in this proposed to minimize the statement estimation error. Compared with the UFK based MAP and based ML, the proposed algorithm provides better convergence and stability.

Neuromuscular symptoms in long COVID patients are common. Since adequate diagnostics are still missing, investigating muscle function might be beneficial. The holding capacity (maximal isometric Adaptive Force; AFisomax) was previously suggested to be especially vulnerable for impairments. This longitudinal, non-clinical study aimed to investigate the AF in long COVID patients in recovery process. AF parameters of elbow/hip flexors were assessed in 17 patients at three timepoints (pre: long COVID state, post: immediately after first treatment, end: recovery) by an objectified manual muscle test. The tester applied an increasing force on the limb of the patient, who had to resist isometrically for as long as possible. The intensity of 13 common symptoms were queried. At pre, patients started to lengthen their muscles at ~50% of the maximal AF (AFmax), which was then reached during eccentric motion, indicating unstable adaptation. At post and end, AFisomax increased significantly to ~99% and 100% of AFmax, respectively, reflecting stable adaptation. AFmax was statistically similar for all three timepoints. Symptoms intensity decreased significantly from pre to end. In conclusion, maximal holding capacity seems to be impaired in long COVID patients and increases with substantial health improvement. AFisomax might be a suitable sensitive functional parameter to assess long COVID patients and to support therapy process.

Noninvasive brain stimulation technique can be used for modulation of motor behaviors such as reaction time (RT). The main aim of this study was to investigate whether RT during a sequential visual isometric pinch task (SVIPT) can be affected by anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a-tDCS) over three different stimulation sites such as dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), primary motor cortex (M1) or posterior parietal cortex (PPC). We also aimed to assess if stimulation of these cortical sites affect the transfer of learning during SVIPT. A total of 48 right-handed healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of the four a-tDCS groups: 1) left M1, 2) left DLPFC, 3) left PPC and 4) sham. A-tDCS was applied concurrent with SVIPT in which the participants were precisely controlled their forces to reach seven different target forces from 10 to 40% of maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) presenting on a computer screen with right dominant hand. Four test blocks were randomly performed at baseline and 15 min after the intervention including sequence and random blocks with either hand. Our results showed significant differences between a-tDCS groups on ratio RT in the sequence blocks of both the right trained (P = .041) and left untrained hands (P = .023) for target forces of 15% and 30 % of MVC, respectively. In sequence blocks, M1 showed significant elongation in ratio RT for the target force of 15% and 30 % MVC compared to PPC and Sham groups in the right hand. In sequence blocks with left hand, this negative effect were found between M1-DLPFC and M1-Sham groups. In random blocks, no significant differences were found among four groups at each target forces for the left hand while there were significant differences for 15% (P =. 04) and 40% MVC (P =. 035) in the right hand. Our findings suggest that three different stimulation sites (DLPFC, M1 or PPC) were differentially affected by a single session of a-tDCS at some target forces during SVIPT. The effects of a-tDCS on ratio RT were transferred in the left untrained hand for sequence blocks but not random blocks. Further research is needed to understand fundamental aspects of these main areas of the brain on temporal processing in a precision control task such as SVIPT.

This study aimed to apply different complexity-based methods to surface electromyography (EMG) in order to detect neuromuscular changes after realistic warm-up and stretching procedures. Sixteen volunteers conducted two experimental sessions. They were tested before, after a standardized warm-up, and after a stretching exercise (static or neuromuscular nerve gliding technique). Tests included measurements of the knee flexion torque and EMG of biceps femoris (BF) and semitendinosus (ST) muscles. EMG was analyzed using the root mean square (RMS), sample entropy (SampEn), percentage of recurrence and determinism following a recurrence quantification analysis (%Rec and %Det) and a scaling parameter from a detrended fluctuation analysis. Torque was significantly greater after warm-up as compared to baseline and after stretching. RMS was not affected by the experimental procedure. In contrast, SampEn was significantly greater after warm-up and stretching as compared to baseline values. %Rec was not modified but %Det for BF muscle was significantly greater after stretching as compared to baseline. The a scaling parameter was significantly lower after warm-up as compared to baseline for ST muscle. From the present results, complexity-based methods applied to the EMG give additional information than linear-based methods. They appeared sensitive to detect EMG complexity increases following warm-up.

Sequential properties can violate Bell-type inequalities without direct influence on each other, but only if detected in pairs. This is demonstrated below with theoretical arguments, and with a straightforward toy model. Rotating arrows can have transient qualities that produce maximal Bell violations with predetermined values. Any non-signaling phenomenon (classical, or non-classical) can also be interpreted as local.

The paper presents the prediction of hydrodynamic characteristics of different rudder -plane configurations behind a submarine in deep water through the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes method in Ansys Fluent Solver. The hydrodynamic force and moment acting on the Cross-plane, X-plane, and Y-plane rudder configurations are analyzed for estimating hydrodynamic coefficientsfor predicting the advantages of each configuration to control the ship. The obtained results show that X-force of the X-plane rudder configuration is larger than the force acting on the Cross-plane rudder and Y-plane rudder configurations. However, Y-force, and Z-force of the X-plane rudder configuration are significantly greater than the Y-force of the left configurations. The same tendency can be seen in the moment of the X-plane rudder about the y-axis and z-axis. The roll moment induced by the Y-plane and Cross-plane rudder configurations is significantly larger than the case of the X-plane rudder configuration.

Dynamic time history analysis is a powerful and effective method to study the seismic response of tunnels, the dynamic time history to analyze the seismic response of the tunnel in the typical subway in this paper. The analysis results show that the overall levelling of the tunnel will not affect the tunnel too much, and the seismic response of the tunnel is mainly related to the relative displacement of the ground around the tunnel. The analysis results show that the internal force of the tunnel and the tunnel inclination have a good linear relationship, and the tunnel inclination can be used to measure the magnitude of the seismic response of the tunnel.

There are two reasons to have an efficient algorithm for identifying all maximal Lyndon substrings of a string: firstly, Bannai et al. introduced in 2015 a linear algorithm to compute all runs of a string that relies on knowing all maximal Lyndon substrings of the input string, and secondly, Franek et al. showed in 2017 a linear equivalence of sorting suffixes and sorting maximal Lyndon substrings of a string, inspired by a novel suffix sorting algorithm of Baier. In 2016, Franek et al. presented a brief overview of algorithms for computing the Lyndon array that encodes the knowledge of maximal Lyndon substrings of the input string. Among the presented were two well-known algorithms for computing the Lyndon array: a quadratic in-place algorithm based on iterated Duval's algorithm for Lyndon factorization, and a linear algorithmic scheme based on linear suffix sorting, computing inverse suffix array, and applying to it the Next Smaller Value algorithm. Duval's algorithm works for strings over any ordered alphabet, while for linear suffix sorting, a constant or an integer alphabet is required. The authors at that time were not aware of Baier's algorithm. In 2017, our research group proposed a novel algorithm for the Lyndon array. Though the proposed algorithm is linear in the average case and has O(n log(n)) worst-case complexity, it is interesting as it emulates the fast Fourier algorithm's recursive approach and introduces tau-reduction that might be of independent interest. In 2018, we presented a linear algorithm to compute the Lyndon array of a string inspired by Phase I of Baier's algorithm for suffix sorting. This paper presents theoretical analysis of these two algorithms and provides empirical comparisons of both their C++ implementations with respect to iterated Duval's algorithm.

In order to improve contrast and restore color for underwater image captured by camera sensors without suffering from insufficient details and color cast, a fusion algorithm for image enhancement in different color spaces based on contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) is proposed in this article. The original color image is first converted from RGB color space to two different special color spaces: YIQ and HSI. The color space conversion from RGB to YIQ is a linear transformation, while the RGB to HSI conversion is nonlinear. Then, the algorithm separately operates CLAHE in YIQ and HSI color spaces to obtain two different enhancement images. The luminance component (Y) in the YIQ color space and the intensity component (I) in the HSI color space are enhanced with CLAHE algorithm. The CLAHE has two key parameters: Block Size and Clip Limit, which mainly control the quality of CLAHE enhancement image. After that, the YIQ and HSI enhancement images are respectively converted backward to RGB color. When the three components of red, green, and blue are not coherent in the YIQ-RGB or HSI-RGB images, the three components will have to be harmonized with the CLAHE algorithm in RGB space. Finally, with 4 direction Sobel edge detector in the bounded general logarithm ratio operation, a self-adaptive weight selection nonlinear image enhancement is carried out to fuse YIQ-RGB and HSI-RGB images together to achieve the final fused image. The enhancement fusion algorithm has two key factors: average of Sobel edge detector and fusion coefficient, and these two factors determine the effects of enhancement fusion algorithm. A series of evaluate metrics such as mean, contrast, entropy, colorfulness metric (CM), mean square error (MSE) and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) are used to assess the proposed enhancement algorithm. The experiments results showed that the proposed algorithm provides more detail enhancement and higher values of colorfulness restoration as compared to other existing image enhancement algorithms. The proposed algorithm can suppress effectively noise interference, improve the image quality for underwater image availably.

This paper addresses the input coupling problem for the shape memory alloy (SMA) actuated parallel platform with completely unknown nonlinear dynamics. The problem means that in a parallel platform with multiple SMA actuators acting together, the displacement of one of the actuators will simultaneously affect the remaining actuators to change. Due to the coupling problem and nonlinear characteristics of the SMA actuators, it is not easy to control the platform to achieve bi-directional swing with completely unknown nonlinear dynamics. Therefore, a model-free adaptive sliding mode control method is proposed to improve the control accuracy of the complex motion of the platform, avoiding the complex modeling process of the SMA actuated parallel platform. Based on the model-free adaptive control (MFAC) theory, a multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) dynamic linearized mathematical model of the parallel platform is established using the online input and output data of the system. Then, a sliding mode controller is designed based on the dynamic model. A rigorous theoretical analysis proves that the proposed model-free adaptive sliding mode controller is able to stably control the SMA actuated parallel platform, and its tracking error is uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB). Finally, experiments are conducted on the established SMA actuated parallel platform. The results show that the proposed model-free controller is feasible and effective, and can control the system well to achieve the complex motion of bi-directional swing.

This paper presents one of the approaches to solution of the problem of the repulsion origin in gravity. The approach is based on the property of compactness characteristic for a self-gravitating object in General Relativity. Here we understand compactness as estimation of the upper boundary for mass such an object in a static two--dimensional sphere. Repulsion originates when this boundary is violated. The main hypothesis is formulated in the form of the principle of maximal mass within a two-dimensional static sphere. It is demonstrated that the principle is true for Schwarzschild black holes on absorption of the matter in the process of accretion, both in the classical case and with due regard for quantum-gravitational corrections. The results have been extended to black holes with the Schwarzschild-de Sitter metric in the early Universe. The applicability of the principle suggested is analyzed for the early and for the present Universe.

The concept of a Social License to Operate (SLO) has become increasingly important in the sustainability literature in recent years. Having its origins in the business discourse of the mining industry with respect to limiting opposition to mining projects, the notion of a social contract above and beyond legal requirements has since become applied across a number of different industries. Despite the concepts adoption confusion exists over the practices and outcomes of SLO, and particularly the nature of engagement. Given this situation it is surprising that not more attention to the role of marketing, and social marketing in particular, in operationalizing the concept. The paper discusses the potential of social marketing to contribute to SLO. Economic, political and social relations are complex in SLO and exchange is intricate in such relational environments. A community-based social marketing orientation is proposed as a means to improve exchange relations and enhance engagement. Seven models of SLO related social marketing models are discussed with community-based social marketing and adaptive co-marketing models being regarded as the most positive for the achievement of an SLO. Potential barriers to adoption of these approaches are noted.

The maximal prime gaps upper bound problem is one of the major mathematical problems to date. The objective of the current research is to develop a standard which will aid in the understanding of the distribution of prime numbers. This paper presents theoretical results which originated with a researchin the subject of the maximal prime gaps. the document presents the sharpest upper bound for the maximal prime gaps ever developed. The result becomes the Supremum bound on the maximal prime gaps and subsequently culminates with the conclusive proof of the Firoozbakht's Hypothesis No 30. Firoozbakht's Hypothesis implies quite a bold conjecture concerning the maximal prime gaps. In fact it imposes one of the strongest maximal prime gaps bounds ever conjectured. Its truth implies the truth of a greater number of known prime gaps conjectures, simultaneously, the Firoozbakht's Hypothesis disproves a known heuristic argument of Granville and Maier. This paper is dedicated to a fellow mathematician, the late Farideh Firoozbakht.

We asked whether the level of peripheral fatigue would differ when three consecutive exercise trials were completed to task failure, and whether there would be delayed recovery in maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) force, neuromuscular activation and peripheral fatigue following task failure. Ten trained sport students performed three consecutive knee extension isometric trials (T1, T2, T3) to task failure without breaks between trials. T1 and T2 consisted of repeated 5-s contractions followed by 5-s rest. In T1, contractions were performed at a target force at 60% pre-exercise MVC. In T2, all contractions were MVCs, and task failure occurred at 50% MVC. T3 was a sustained MVC performed until force fell below 15% MVC. Evoked force responses to supramaximal electrical femoral nerve stimulation were recorded to assess peripheral fatigue. Electromyography signals were normalized to M-wave amplitude to assess neuromuscular activation. Lower levels of evoked peak forces were observed at T3 compared to T2 and T1. Within 5 s of task failure in T3, MVC force and neuromuscular activation recovered substantially without any recovery in evoked peak force. Neuromuscular activation 5-10 s after T3 was unchanged from pre-exercise values, but evoked peak forces were substantially reduced. These results challenge the existence of a critical peripheral fatigue threshold that reduces neuromuscular activation. Since neuromuscular activation changed independently of any change in evoked peak force, immediate recovery in force production after exercise is due to increased central recruitment and not to peripheral mechanisms.

The problem addressed in this article consists of the motion control of a quadrotor, comprising model disturbances and uncertainties. In order to tackle model uncertainty, adaptive control based on reinforcement learning is used. The distinctive feature of this article, in comparison with other works on quadrotor control using reinforcement learning is the exploration of the underlying optimal control problem in which a quadratic cost and a linear dynamics allow an algorithm that runs in real time. Instead of identifying a plant model, adaptation is obtained by approximating the performance index given by the Q-function using directional forgetting recursive least squares that rely on a linear regressor build from quadratic functions of input/output data. The adaptive algorithm proposed is tested in simulation in a cascade control structure that drives a quadrotor. Simulations show the improvement in performance that results when the proposed algorithm is turned on.

Abstract: Understanding the reliability and sensitivity of jump testing is essential to determine the neuromuscular progress of athletes and make informed decisions. This study aimed to assess the reliability and sensitivity of countermovement jump (CMJ) and drop jump (DJ) tests metrics in female volleyball players. Sixteen semi-professional female volleyball players participated in the study. Intrasession and intersession reliability of CMJ and DJ metrics were evaluated using a randomized cross-over design. Dual force platform was used to collect data, and several dependent variables were calculated using forward dynamics. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), coefficients of variation (CV) and minimum difference (MD) were calculated. The third attempt presented the highest values for both test, and changes in jump strategy in DJ. CMJ is consistent across sessions, while DJ also shows intersession differences (p<0.05) in 11 out of 15 variables. Most CMJ variables exhibit excellent reliability while DJ variables have lower reliability and higher variability. Concentric and eccentric impulses for DJ showed excellent reliability. Most CMJ variables showed excellent reliability and variability, DJ had lower reliability, higher variability, and lower sensitivity. These findings provide valuable information when assessing athletes' performance and highlight the reliability, sensitivity, and variability in jump performance for CMJ and DJ tests.

Linear-width is a well-regarded width parameter in graph theory. The constructs of linear loose tangle and linear tangle present obstacles to attaining linear-width. In this succinct paper, our primary focus will be the exploration of maximal linear loose tangles.

Maximal heart rate (HRmax) is a widely used measure of cardiorespiratory fitness. Prediction of HRmax is an alternative to cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET), but its accuracy among endurance athletes (EA) requires evaluation. This study aimed to externally validate HRmax prediction models in the EA independently for running and cycling CPET. 4043 runners (age=33.58 (8.12) years; 83.53% males; BMI=23.66 (2.54) kg·m−2) and 1026 cyclists (age=36.88 (9.03) years; 89.67% males; BMI=24.04 (2.65) kg·m−2) underwent maximum CPET. Student t-test, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute error (MAE), and root mean square error (RMSE) were applied to externally validate 8 running and 5 cycling HRmax equations. HRmax was 184.60 (9.79) beats·min−1 and 182.66 (10.28) beats·min−1 respectively for running and cycling, p=0.001. Measured and predicted HRmax differed significantly (p=0.001) for 9 of 13 (69.23%) models. HRmax was overestimated by 8 (61.54%) and underestimated by 5 (38.46%) formulae. Overestimated HRmax ranged 0.08-4.94 beats·min−1 and underestimated HRmax ranged 0.03-4.90 beats·min−1. MAE and RMSE were 0.18-4.94 beats·min−1 and 9.13-10.47, respectively. MAPE ranged 3.95-4.69%. Prediction models do not allow for accurate estimation of HRmax. HRmax was more often underestimated than overestimated. Predicted HRmax can be implemented for EA as a supplemental method but CPET is the preferable approach.

The literature offers limited information on the effect of obesity on the rate of force development, a critical parameter for mobility in older adults. The objectives of this study were; to explore the influence of obesity on RFD in older adults and to examine the association between this neuromuscular parameter and walking speed. 42 older adults were classified into two groups: the control group (CG, n=22; age=81.13±4.02 years; Body mass index (BMI)=25.13±3.35 kg/m²), and the obese group (OG, n=20; age=77.71±2.95 years; BMI=34.46±3.25 kg/m²). Walking speed (m/s) was measured using the 10-meter walking test. Neuromuscular parameters of the plantar flexors were evaluated during a maximal voluntary contraction test using a dynamometer. The RFD was calculated from the linear slop of the force – time curve in two phases: from the onset of the contraction to 50 ms (RFD50-100) and from 100 to 200 ms (RFD100-200). The gait speed was lower in the OG compared to the CG (p

For many engineering applications it is sufficient to use the concept of simple materials. However, higher gradients of the kinematic variables are taken into account to model materials with internal length scales as well as to describe localization effects using gradient theories in finite plasticity or fluid mechanics. In many approaches length scale parameter have been introduced that are related to a specific micro structure. An alternative approach is possible, if a thermodynamically consistent framework is used for material modelling as shown in the present contribution. However, even if sophisticated and thermodynamically consistent material models can be established there are still not yet standard experiments to determine higher order material constants. In order to contribute to this ongoing discussion system identification based on the method of self-adaptive filtering is proposed in this paper. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach it has been applied to second-order gradient materials considering longitudinal vibrations. Based on thermodynamically consistent models that have been solved numerically it has been possible to prove that system identification based on self-adaptive filtering can be used effectively for both narrow-band and broadband signals in the field of second-order gradient materials. It has also been found that the differences identified for simple materials and gradient materials allow for condition monitoring and detection of gradient effects in the material behavior.

Gaze tracking of high-speed moving targets is a novel application mode for low Earth orbit microsatellites. In this mode, small satellites are equipped with high-resolution narrow-field-of-view video cameras for stable gaze-tracking imaging of high-speed moving targets. This paper proposes a high-precision attitude adaptive integral sliding mode control method with a feedforward compensation disturbance observer to enhance the capability of a microsatellite attitude control system for gaze tracking of high-speed moving targets. Specifically, first, we present the attitude control system model for microsatellites and the calculation method for the desired attitude of target tracking based on image feedback. Then, an adaptive integral sliding mode attitude control algorithm with a feedforward compensation disturbance observer, which meets the requirements of high-precision tracking control, is designed. The developed algorithm utilizes the disturbance observer to observe the friction torque of the flywheel and compensates for it through feedforward control. It also employs the adaptive integral sliding mode control algorithm to reduce the impact of uncertain disturbances, decrease the steady-state error of the system, and enhance the attitude control precision. Simulation experiments demonstrated that the designed disturbance observer can successfully observe the frictional disturbance torque of the flywheel. The attitude Euler angle control precision for high-speed moving target tracking reached 0.009°, and the angular velocity control precision reached 0.005°/s, validating the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Incobotulinumtoxin A and Yoga-like Isometric Exercise in Adolescent Idiopathic Lumbar Scoliosis – a randomized pilot study Abstract: Background: Approximately 90% of scoliosis is adolescent idiopathic (AIS). From its first appearance at 10-14 until age 18 it is most vulnerable to deterioration; young people are most susceptible to the condition worsening. An effective non-surgical means of remediation would be welcome. Design: Randomized control two-arm study, assessing the safety and efficacy of combining incobotulinum injections with yoga to reverse lumbar and thoracolumbar AIS. Methods: In a private clinic setting, non-pregnant healthy 12 – 18 year-olds were either taught a symmetrical “placebo” yoga pose (control sub-group 1), given the side plank (Vasisthasana) done thrice daily with placebo injection (control sub-group 2) or given the thrice-daily side-plank with botulinum injection (Intervention group 3). Injection: 33 IU of incobotulinum toxin type A (Xeomin) injected into concave-side lumbar paraspinals and quadratus lumborum at L2-3 and the psoas muscle at L3-4, or injected similarly with placebo. Randomization by Random.com. Objective: Assess whether muscular asymmetry treated with botulinum toxin injection and the side-plank are safe and effective in AIS.Results: Outcome: Twelve intervention and 12 placebo patients (Groups 1 + 2), 12 -18 years old completed the three-month study period. Mean daily side-plank time = 165 seconds. Mean initial lumbar curvature was 36.9 degrees (SD 14.36), (p<0.0001); mean curvature at 3 weeks was 29.5 degrees. (SD 14.23) (p<0.0001); mean curvature at 3 months was 26.0 degrees (SD 12.81) Onset vs 3-month value: p<0.0001. Two patients in Group 3 complained of shoulder pain, and 2 of wrist pain that resolved when the side-plank was done on the elbow. Conclusion: Muscle asymmetry appears relevant to AIS treatment. Incobotulinum injections combined with the side-plank done with the convex side downward may be safe and helpful in adolescent idiopathic lumbar scoliosis.

Incobotulinumtoxin A and Yoga-like Isometric Exercise in Adolescent Idiopathic Lumbar Scoliosis – a randomized pilot study Abstract: Background: Approximately 90% of scoliosis is adolescent idiopathic (AIS). From its first appearance at 10-14 until age 18 it is most vulnerable to deterioration; young people are most susceptible to the condition worsening. An effective non-surgical means of remediation would be welcome. Design: Randomized control two-arm study, assessing the safety and efficacy of combining incobotulinum injections with yoga to reverse lumbar and thoracolumbar AIS. Methods: In a private clinic setting, non-pregnant healthy 12 – 18 year-olds were either taught a symmetrical “placebo” yoga pose (control sub-group 1), given the side plank (Vasisthasana) done thrice daily with placebo injection (control sub-group 2) or given the thrice-daily side-plank with botulinum injection (Intervention group 3). Injection: 33 IU of incobotulinum toxin type A (Xeomin) injected into concave-side lumbar paraspinals and quadratus lumborum at L2-3 and the psoas muscle at L3-4, or injected similarly with placebo. Randomization by Random.com. Objective: Assess whether muscular asymmetry treated with botulinum toxin injection and the side-plank are safe and effective in AIS. Results: Outcome: Twelve intervention and 12 placebo patients (Groups 1 + 2), 12 -18 years old completed the three-month study period. Mean daily side-plank time = 165 seconds. Mean initial lumbar curvature was 36.9 degrees (SD 14.36), (p<0.0001); mean curvature at 3 weeks was 29.5 degrees. (SD 14.23) (p<0.0001); mean curvature at 3 months was 26.0 degrees (SD 12.81) Onset vs 3-month value: p<0.0001. Two patients in Group 3 complained of shoulder pain, and 2 of wrist pain that resolved when the side-plank was done on the elbow. Conclusion: Muscle asymmetry appears relevant to AIS treatment. Incobotulinum injections combined with the side-plank done with the convex side downward may be safe and helpful in adolescent idiopathic lumbar scoliosis.

Most of the research in data mining concentrated on finding the positive associations that exist in frequent patterns. Frequent patterns have no bearing on the time duration and, therefore, lose interestingness. The Regularity of an itemset is related to the time at which the transaction occurred and the time distance between the transactions. Frequent Regular item sets can be generated considering the Frequency and the Regularity of the occurrence of the Item Sets. The frequent and regular Item sets will be so huge that they cannot be handled in real time. The count of Frequent and regular item sets gets reduced drastically when the properties “closed” and “Maximality” are applied. Finding negative associations among such patterns are important in the field of medicine. Many drugs administered to cure some diseases have counter reactions leading to many other diseases. Negative associations among the mined patterns are important as they reveal significant contradictions frequently among medical drugs administered by medical practitioners to cure some diseases. This paper proposes a method that mines medical databases to find regular, frequent patterns applied with closed and maximal properties and find negative associations among those patterns. The proposed algorithm is accurate to 98% and performs 9% more efficiently than the other algorithms presented in the literature.

The electric field is enormously more powerful than the gravitational field. However, in our normal experience there is no electric field, the electric force is missing. How is it that when you get to larger and larger scales the gravitational field is extremely important whereas the electric field becomes less and less important [1]? This paper proposes a model to explain why gravitation dominates at a larger scale.

Environmentally friendly lead-free K1-xNaxNbO3 (KNN) ceramics possess electromechanical properties comparable to lead-based ferroelectric materials, but cannot meet the needs of device miniaturization, and the corresponding thin films lack of theoretical and experimental studies. To this end, we developed the nonlinear phenomenological theory for ferroelectric materials to study the effects of non-equiaxed misfit strain on the phase structure, electromechanical properties and electrical response of K0.5Na0.5NbO3 epitaxial films and constructed the in-plane misfit strain (u1-u2) phase diagrams. The results show that K0.5Na0.5NbO3 epitaxial film under non-equiaxed in-plane strain can exhibit abundant phase structures, including orthorhombic a1c, a2c and a1a2 phases, tetragonal a1, a2 and c phases, and monoclinic r12 phases. Moreover, in the vicinity of a2c-r12, a1c-c and a1a2-a2 phase boundaries, K0.5Na0.5NbO3 epitaxial films exhibit excellent dielectric constant ε11, while at a2c -r12 and a1c-c phase boundaries large piezoelectric coefficient d15 is observed. It was also found that high permittivity ε33 and piezoelectric coefficients d33 exist near the a2c - a2, r12- a1a2 and a1c-a1 phase boundaries due to the existence of polymorphic phase boundaries (PPB) in the KNN system, which makes it easy to polarize near the phase boundaries, and the polarizability changes suddenly, leading to electromechanical enhancement. In addition, the results show that the K0.5Na0.5NbO3 thin films possess a large electrocaloric response at the phase boundary at the r12-a1a2 and a1c-a1 phase boundaries. And the maximum adiabatic temperature change ∆T is about 3.62 K when the electric field change is 30 MV/m at room temperature, which is significantly enhanced compared with equiaxed strain. This study provides theoretical guidance for obtaining K1-xNaxNbO3 epitaxial thin films with excellent properties.

Although researchers have proposed various indentation size effect (ISE) models, these models often involve different form and number of parameters that can make our wonder which is the best in existed ISE models. Three types of ISE test data, namely, normal ISE, reverse ISE and transition of normal to reverse ISE, are used to evaluate the sixteen ISE models. The comparatively study indicates that H-J, N-G-Fs, N-G-H, N-G-A and N-G-Qs models can accurately predict the normal ISE. The reason for this is that the friction stress that is not related to dislocation activities or the indentation size effect of plastic zone has been introduced into these models. Therefore, these two factors should be considered in future ISE models. The sixteen ISE models are originally proposed to describe the normal ISE of different materials. However, to our surprise, some of these models are able to capture the reverse ISE and the transition of normal to reverse ISE of different materials. The determination coefficients (DC) of the sixteen ISE models are also determined for different materials. For reverse ISE, the highest DC value for NiCSi, TC4 and PED Ni are given by the EXP, N-G-Fs and N-G-A models, respectively. For the transition of normal to reverse ISE, the N-G-YC, N-G-Fs, and N-G-H models produce the maximum DC for ZrO2, Cu and Y2O3-ZrO2, respectively. Moreover, the mean DC of the N-G-Fs model is the maximum among the sixteen ISE models, followed by the N-G-H model, but they cannot accurately predict the reverse ISE. Therefore, the N-G-Fs and N-G-H models should be further modified to accurately predict the reverse ISE.

Semantic segmentation of high-resolution remote sensing images provides detailed and precise feature information, playing a pivotal role in decision-making and analysis in sectors such as water management, agriculture, military, and environmental protection. However, most methods merely combine features from various branches directly, without a mechanism for spatial location feature screening, and treat all extracted features as equally important. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a novel spatially adaptive interaction network (SAINet) for dynamic interaction across different features in remote sensing semantic segmentation task. Specifically, we propose a spatial refined module that leverages local context information to filter spatial locations and extract salient regions. Following this, we introduce an innovative spatial interaction module that uses a spatial adaptive modulation mechanism to dynamically select and allocate spatial position weights. This facilitates interaction between local salient areas and global information, allowing the network to focus more on relevant regions. This flexible approach enables the network to capture more informative features, thereby enhancing segmentation accuracy. Experiments conducted on the DeepGlobe, Vaihingen, and Potsdam public datasets confirm the effectiveness and capability of SAINet. Our code and models will be publicly available

Adaptation to external forces relies on a well-functioning proprioceptive system including muscle spindle afferents. Muscle length-tension control in reaction to external forces is most important regarding the Adaptive Force (AF). This study investigated the effect of different procedures, which are assumed to influence the function of muscle spindles, on the AF. 19 elbow flexors of 12 healthy participants were assessed by an objectified manual muscle test (MMT) with different procedures: regular MMT, MMT after pre-contraction (self-estimated 20% MVIC) in lengthened position with passive return to test position (CL) and MMT after CL with a second pre-contraction in test position (CL-CT). During regular MMTs, muscles maintained their length up to 99.7±1.0% of the maximal AF (AFmax). After CL, muscles started to lengthen at 53.0±22.5% of AFmax. For CL-CT, muscles were again able to maintain the isometric position up to 98.3±5.5% of AFmax. AFisomax differed highly significantly between CL vs. CL-CT and regular MMT. CL is assumed to generate a slack of muscle spindles which led to a substantial reduction of the holding capacity. This was immediately erased by a pre-contraction in test position. The results substantiate that muscle spindle sensitivity seems to play an important role for neuromuscular functioning and musculoskeletal stability.

Background: The purpose of this study was to ascertain the reliability of two 15-sec sprint cycling tests in men and women to estimate the maximum rate of glycolysis or lactate production (VLa-Max). Methods: Eighteen men and twelve women completed two sprint sessions over 1-week. A 10-min warm-up preceded a 3 µl blood lactate (BLC) sample, after which a 15-sec sprint was completed; cyclists then rested passively while multiple lactate samples were taken until levels peaked. VLaMax was calculated as (Peak BLC – Pre BLC) * (15-sec – Talac)-1. Trial differences and reliability across trials were analyzed using a paired-sample t-test, Pearson correlation, ICC, and Bland-Altman analysis with α=0.05 for all tests; data are reported as mean ± sd. Results: Power (W) was similar across trails (773.0 ±143.5 vs. 758.2 ± 127.4; p = 0.333) and coefficient of varia-tion (CV) of 4.7%. VLaMax was similar (0.673 ± 0.024 vs 0.635 ± 0.237; p = 0.280), but only moder-ately reliably across trials with a CV, ICC, and R value of 18.6%, 0.661, and 0.67, respectively. Conclusions: A 15-sec VLaMax cycling sprint is moderately reliable being affected both by the lac-tate measurement and other variables used in the calculation. More research may offer ways to improve reliability.

Ustilago maydis, member of the Ustilaginaceae family, is a promising host for the production of several metabolites including itaconic acid. This dicarboxylate has great potential as a bio-based building block in the polymer industry, and is of special interest for pharmaceutical applications. Several itaconate overproducing Ustilago strains have been generated by metabolic and morphology engineering. This yielded stabilized unicellular morphology through fuz7 deletion, reduction of by-product formation through deletion of genes responsible for itaconate oxidation and (glyco)lipid production, and the overexpression of the regulator of the itaconate cluster ria1 and the mitochondrial tricarboxylate transporter encoded by mttA from Aspergillus terreus. In this study, itaconate production was further optimized by consolidating these different optimizations into one strain. The combined modifications resulted in itaconic acid production at theoretical maximal yield, which was achieved under biotechnologically relevant fed-batch fermentations with continuous feed.

Hypertension and arterial stiffness are the main factors contributing to cardiovascular disease. L-citrulline, a nitric oxide precursor, has been proposed as a blood pressure-lowering intervention. This study aimed to investigate the impact of L-citrulline on central and peripheral blood pressure, arterial stiffness, and muscle oxygenation at rest and during an isometric knee extension exercise protocol. Twelve older males received 6 g of L-citrulline or a placebo for six days using a double-blind crossover design. Blood hemodynamics parameters (i.e., arterial and brachial systolic and diastolic blood pressure, mean arterial pressure, pulse pressure, heart rate), arterial stiffness (i.e., augmented pressure, augmentation index, forward, backward wave pressure and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity) and muscle oxygenation [i.e., oxyhemoglobin (Δ[O2Hb]) and deoxyhemoglobin (Δ[HHb]), total hemoglobin concentration (Δ[tHb]) and tissue saturation index (TSI%)], were measured at baseline, post-supplementation and during isometric exercise. No significant effects of L-citrulline supplementation were observed at rest or during exercise on blood pressure, arterial stiffness, and muscle blood flow. Both central and peripheral blood pressure were increased during the exercise, which is consistent with isometric contractions. The results of the present study question the efficacy of short-term L-citrulline in decreasing blood pressure at rest or attenuating blood pressure increases during isometric exercise.

The manual muscle test (MMT) is a flexible diagnostic tool, which is used in many disciplines, applied in several ways. The main problem is the subjectivity of the test. The MMT in the version of a “break test” depends on the tester’s force rise and the patient’s ability to resist the applied force. As a first step, the investigation of the reproducibility of the testers’ force profiles is required for valid application. The study examined the force profiles of n=29 testers (n=9 experiences (Exp), n=8 little experienced (LitExp), n =12 beginners (Beg)). The testers performed 10 MMTs according to the test of hip flexors, but against a fixed leg to exclude the patient’s reaction. A handheld device recorded the temporal course of the applied force. The results show significant differences between Exp and Beg concerning the starting force (padj=0.029), the ratio of starting to maximum force (padj=0.005) and the normalized mean Euclidean distances between the 10 trials (padj=0.015). The slope is significantly higher in Exp vs. LitExp (p=0.006) and Beg (p=0.005). The results also indicate that experienced testers show inter-tester differences and partly even a low intra-tester reproducibility. That highlights the necessity of an objective MMT-assessment. Furthermore, an agreement on a standardized force profile is required – a suggestion is given.

The draconian regulation required by the inherent instability of cognitive phenomena -- gene expression, immune function, cancer suppression, wound healing, animal consciousness, machine intelligence, network stabilization, institutional cognition, and their many and varied composites -- can be viewed through the lens of the asymptotic limit theorems of both information and control theories. Here, we explore the dynamics and sometimes highly punctuated failures of the regulation of cognition under increasing `noise'. The approach parallels, and indeed generalizes, the Data Rate Theorem of control theory, extending the theorem's requirement of a minimum channel capacity necessary for stabilization of an inherently unstable system. Various models are explored across different basic underlying probability distributions characteristic of the system under study, and across different hierarchical scales, finding the addition of adaptive -- learned -- regulation greatly extends the reach of innate -- e.g., AI-driven or otherwise pre-programmed -- regulation. This work points toward the construction of new statistical tools for the analysis of observational and empirical data across a wide spectrum of inherent pathologies and adversarial challenges afflicting a wide variety of cognitive processes.

Graph visualization has evolved significantly over time, offering various methods to effectively represent complex data structures. This study introduces a novel force-directed algorithm for 3D data visualization, specifically tailored for commonly used datasets in linked data visualization. Leveraging the power of graph theory and methods, the algorithm aims to address the challenge of creating visually appealing and easily interpretable visualizations, which often necessitate advanced user interaction. By utilizing 3D space and the Unity Engine, the research successfully visualizes data and develops interactive visualizations, overcoming limitations of basic force-directed implementations. The main contribution of presented research is in the force-directed algorithm with springs and controlled placement as a visualization technique that combines the use of springs and attractive forces to stabilize a graph in a 3D environment. The combination of these two techniques also helps prevent the formation of a single large cluster within the graph, enhancing the overall visualization quality.

The Universe is treated as an unbound thermodynamic system in which two forces of Nature compete: Attractive gravity loss and repulsive entropic gain. Entropic gain, although not presently considered a force of Nature, is otherwise well known and can be expressed with the gas laws. The Universe at the time of last scattering was all gas. Its instant gain is expressed as gas pressure. When the Gibbs equation is properly applied to this unbound gas, the resulting atomic Hubble parameter is found to be exclusively dependent on baryon density, giving a constant and perpetual two-to-one gain/loss ratio. Instant loss to gravity cannot offset gas pressure in this “thermal equation”. By contrast, the Friedmann equation, a ΛCDM foundation, treats baryon mass as accreted, having little if any entropic gain. These two equations are actually equivalent. Expanding accreted matter at its comoving critical density is herein shown to behave exactly like a freely expanding gas. However, neither equation includes all of today’s Universal kinetic energy, and cannot by themselves fully account for observed stellar movement. The present paper proposes the plausible existence of highly energetic or “suprathermal” free electrons which comprise about half of the intergalactic medium’s kinetic total. It is this suprathermal energy which Λ expresses. The fluid equation, another ΛCDM foundation, eliminates entropic gain from the Gibbs equation. Additionally, rest mass’s Einstein energy E=Mc² is treated as a thermal variable. These two assumptions, isoentropy and energy conflation, led astronomers to populate Λ as they followed the prior art.

This article deals primarily with the problem of determining the cutting force when machining hardened steels. Secondary issues are focused on the evaluation of surface quality on machined samples and the recommendation of cutting conditions. A wide variety of components are used in engineering, the final heat treatment of which is hardening. These components are usually critical in a particular product. The quality of these components determines the correct functioning of the entire technical equipment and ultimately its service life. In our case, these are the core parts of thrust bearings, specifically the rolling elements. The subject of the experiment is machining these components in the hardened state with cubic boron nitride tools and continuous measurement of the cutting force using a dynamometer. The following evaluation assesses the surface quality by both touch and non-touch methods. A structural equation with appropriate constant and exponents was then constructed from the data obtained using the dynamometer.

In the last years, advances in materials engineering based on adaptive electronics have found a new paradigm to optimize drawbacks in signal processing. A two-layer MnO/ZnO:Zn heterostructure envisioned for frequency adaptive electronic signal processing is synthesized by sputtering where the use of internal states allows reconfigurability to obtain new operating modes at different frequency input signals. An X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) is performed on each layer, MnO:Mn had a cubic and ZnO:Zn a hexagonal structure with preferential growth in [111] and [002] directions respectively. It is determined that the coupling in this heterojunction is compatible with a mismatch less 1 % due texture in each layer which implies a low number of defects. An electrical characterisation with an oscilloscope and signal generator was carried out to obtain the time-response signals and current-voltage (I-V) curves where no degradation is detected when changing from a range of frequencies (100 Hz – 1 MHz). An equivalent circuit is proposed to explain the effects in the interface. Finally, the MnO/ZnO:Zn heterojunction delivers states that are stable, repeatable, and reproducible and it demonstrates how the interaction of the materials can be used in adaptive device applications applying frequencies and internal states as to create new and innovative design schematics, reducing the numbers of components/connections in a system for future sustainable electronics.

The availability of current land cover and land use (LCLU) information for monitoring the status of land resources has considerable value in ensuring sustainable land use planning. Similarly, the need to provide updated information on the extent of LCLU change in West Africa has become apparent, given the increasing demand for land resources driven by the rapid population growth in the sub-region. SERVIR West Africa, a regional consortium jointly supported by USAID and NASA to foster the use of geospatial and earth observation data and science for decision-making on critical environmental and food security challenges, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is building technical capacity in the sub-region to develop and implement harmonized regional land cover classification system for LULC change monitoring in West Africa, based on the Land Cover Meta Language (LCML-ISO 19144-2). This article focuses on the process, potential opportunities, outputs of this collaboration, exemplary use cases, and recommendations for the next steps.

Lamb wave-based structural health monitoring is widely acknowledged as a reliable 11 method for damage identification, classification, localization and quantification. However, due to 12 the complexity of Lamb wave signals, especially after interacting with structural components and 13 defects, interpreting these waves and extracting useful information about the structure's health is 14 still a major challenge. However, deep learning-based strategy offers a great opportunity to address 15 such challenges as the algorithm can operate directly on raw discrete time-domain signals. Unlike 16 traditional methods, which often require careful feature engineering and preprocessing, deep learn-17 ing can automatically extract relevant features from the raw data. This paper proposes an autoen-18 coder based on a bidirectional long short-term memory network with maximal overlap discrete 19 wavelet transform layer to detect the signal anomaly and determine the location of the damage in 20 the composite structure. This approach has the potential to greatly enhance our ability to detect and 21 locate structural damage in composite structures, thereby increasing safety and efficiency.

The result of the multidisciplinary collaboration of researchers from different areas of knowledge to validate a solar radiation model is presented. The MAPsol is a 3D local-scale adaptive solar radiation model that allows to estimate direct, diffuse and reflected irradiance for clear sky conditions. The model includes the adaptation of the mesh to complex orography and albedo, and considers the shadows cast by the terrain and buildings. The surface mesh generation is based on surface refinement, smoothing and parameterisation techniques and allows the generation of high quality adapted meshes with a reasonable number of elements. Another key aspect of the paper is the generation of a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM). This high-resolution DEM is constructed from LiDAR data and its resolution if two times more accurate than the publicly available DEMs. The validation process uses direct and global solar irradiance data obtained from pyranometers at the University of Salamanca located in an urban area affected by systematic shading from nearby buildings. This work provides an efficient protocol for studying solar resources, with particular emphasis on areas of complex orography and dense buildings where shadows can potentially make solar energy production facilities less efficient.

Objectives. To show the superiority of eccentric versus concentric strengthening in terms of improving quadriceps strength in knee osteoarthritis (OA). A randomized controlled study was conducted to perform 12 sessions of either eccentric or concentric isokinetic muscle strengthening over 6 weeks Methods. We recruited males and females, aged between 40 and 70 years, with predominantly unilateral femorotibial OA. Exclusion criteria were having a prosthesis, inflammatory arthritis or flare-up of OA, symptomatic patellofemoral OA, cardio-vascular or pulmonary disease that could be a contraindication to the study treatment, and any pathology that could cause muscle weakness. The primary endpoint was the between-group difference in change in maximum concentric isokinetic knee extension peak torque (PT) at 60°/s on the OA side at 6 weeks. Secondary endpoints were between-group difference in change in concentric hamstring PT at 60°/s; eccentric quadriceps and hamstring PT at 30°/s; 10 m and 200 m walking speeds; pain and functional status (WOMAC score) at 6 weeks and 6 months. Results. The sample consisted of 11 females and 27 males, with a mean age of 57.7 ±7.52 years and a body mass index (BMI) of 25.95 ±3.93 kg/m². Quadriceps strength increased more at 6 weeks in the concentric than the eccentric group with no statistical difference. There was a rate of 25% major adverse events in the eccentric group. Conclusion. Eccentric training resulted in a smaller improvement in quadriceps strength than concentric training and was associated with a high risk of muscle injury, particularly to the hamstring muscles.

Aim: To investigate the effects of intensive physical exercise on retinal microvascular regulation in healthy volunteers by the adaptive optics retinal camera measurement. Methods: We included healthy volunteers (11 men and 14 women) aged 20.6± 0.9. Heart rate (HR) and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) were recorded before and after a submaximal physical exertion of continuously riding a training ergometer. The superior temporal retinal artery measurements were captured using the adaptive optics (AO) camera rtx1TM (Imagine Eyes, Orsay, France) without pupil dilatation. We compared measures of vessel diameter (VD), lumen diameter (LD), two walls (Wall 1, 2), wall-to-lumen ratio (WLR), and wall cross-sectional analysis (WCSA) before and immediately after the cessation of exercise. Results: Cardiovascular parameters: After exercise, SBP, DBP and HR changed significantly from 130.2±13.2 to 159.7±15.6 mm Hg, 81.2±6.3 to 77.1±8.2 mm Hg and 80.8±16.1 to 175.0±6.2 bpm, respectively (p < 0.002). Retinal microcirculation analysis: Before the exercise, the mean LD was 96.0±6.8, VD 118.5±8.3, WLR 0.234±0.02, WCSA 3802.8±577.6. The mean LD and Wall 1 did not change significantly after exercise but slightly decreased. The VD, Wall 2, WLR and WCSA decreased significantly (p

In the case of solid slabs made of reinforced concrete that are usually subjected to bending, large areas of the structure are stressed well below their load-bearing capacity. Contrary to this are shell structures, which can bridge large spans with little material if designed according to the force flow. To improve the efficiency of ceiling slabs, we want to utilize the shell load-bearing behavior on a smaller scale by resolving the solid interior accordingly. In order to be able to study a wide range of such constructions virtually, a parametric multiobjective simulation environment is being developed in an ongoing research project. The basic analysis approaches which were implemented are presented in this paper. The basic workflow, the used programs and material models and their calibration on the tests on textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) samples are described.

The properties of the dark matter, dark energy, graviton and photon are discussed in terms of the new three-dimensional quantized space model. Three new particles (bastons) with the electric charges (EC) are proposed as the dark matters. It is proposed that the EC, LC and CC charges are aligned along the time axes but not along the space axes. The photon is confined on its corresponding three-dimensional quantized space. However, the graviton can be evaporated into other three-dimensional quantized spaces. The rest mass of the electron neutrino (n_e) of 3.494·10⁻³ eV/c² is obtained from the experimental vacuum energy density in terms of quantum field theory (QFT). The rest mass and force range of the massive g(0,0,0) graviton with the Planck size are m_g = 3.1872·10⁻³¹ eV/c² and x_r = 3.0955·10²³ m = 10.0 Mpc, respectively, based on the experimental rest mass and rms charge radius of the proton. The possible diameter (10 Mpc) of the largest galaxy cluster is remarkably consistent with the gravitational force range (10 Mpc). Then, the diameter of the largest dark matter distribution related to the largest galaxy cluster is 9.2865·10²³ m = 30 Mpc equal to the force range of the massive g(0) graviton with the rest mass of 1.0624·10⁻³¹ eV/c². Because of the huge number (N) of the evaporated gravitons, the very small Coulomb’s constant of about 10⁻⁴⁸k and large gravitation constant of 10⁶G_N are expected for the charged dark matters. Therefore, F_c(mm) > F_g(dd) > F_g(mm) > F_g(dm) > F_c(dd) > F_c(dm) = 0 for the proton-like particle. The proposed weak gravitational force between the dark matters and normal matters explains the observed dark matter distributions of the bullet cluster, Abell 1689 cluster and Abell 520 cluster. The transition from the galaxy without the dark matters to the galaxy with the dark matters are explained. Also, the accelerated space expansion is caused by the new space quanta created by the evaporated gravitons into the x1x2x3 space and repulsive electromagnetic force between dark matters corresponding to the dark energy. The decreasing coupling constant of the strong force, neutron lifetime anomaly and the pressure distribution inside the proton are explained by the unobservable proton and hadronization. And the rest mass of 1.4 TeV/c² is assigned to the Le particle with the EC charge of −2e. The proposed rest mass (26.12 eV/c²) of the B1 dark matter is indirectly confirmed from the supernova 1987A data. Also, the gravitation constant has been changing with the time because of the graviton evaporation.

Present paper is dealing with the adaptive static balancing of robot or other mechatronic arms that are moving in vertical plane and whose static loads are variable, by using counterweights and springs. Some simple passive and approximate solutions are proposed and an example is shown. The active and exact solutions by using adaptive real time control in the case of unknown variation of static loads are simulated on VIPRO platform developed at Institute of Solid Mechanics of Romanian Academy.

Force reduction is one of the most important benefit of applying ultrasonic vibration on milling. However, most of studies so far are limited to experimental investigation. In the current study, an analytical predictive model on cutting forces in ultrasonic vibration-assisted milling is proposed. The three types of tool-workpiece criteria are considered based on the instantaneous position and velocity of tool center. Type I criterion indicates that there is no contact if the instantaneous velocity is opposite to tool rotation direction. Type II criterion checks whether the vibration displacement is larger than the instantaneous uncut chip thickness. Type III criterion considers the overlaps between current and previous tool paths due to vibration. If none of these criteria is satisfied, milling forces are nonzero. Then the calculation is performed by transforming milling and tool geometry configuration to orthogonal cutting at each instant. The orthogonal cutting forces are predicted through the exhaustive search of shear angle and calculation of shear flow stress on tool-chip interface. The axial force is then calculated based on tool geometry, and the milling forces in feed, cutting, and axial directions are calculated after coordinate transformation. The proposed predictive force model in ultrasonic vibration-assisted milling is validated through comparison to experimental measurements on Aluminum alloy 2A12. The predicted values are able to match the measured milling forces with high accuracy of average difference of 13.6% in feed direction and 13.8% in cutting direction.

The seasonally adjusted civilian labor force participation rate, the sum of employed and unemployed persons as a percentage of the civilian non-institutional population, is analysed in the general to specific modelling framework with a saturating set of step indicators from January 1977 through June 2018. The results indicate that, ceteris paribus, the rise in the ratio of women to men in the labor force in addition to positive demographic movements can largely account for the rise in the labor force participation rate up to January 2000. Subsequently, the aging population helps to explain the decline. Recessions play a transitory role.

A deep relationship is identified between the Coulomb Force and Gravity. A gravitational constant for strong gravity is calculated from the relationship. The equivalence between mass and charge is explored. Implications are given for the expansion of Einstein's Field Equations to include vector gravity.

Studies on evolution have made significant progress in multiple disciplines, but evolutionary theories remain scattered and controversial. Here we deduce that, thermodynamically, many carbon-based entities (CBEs) on the Earth tend to absorb energy from widespread relatively temperate heat streams on the Earth flowing from the solar, geothermal, and other energy sources, to form higher-hierarchy CBEs (HHCBEs). This has been the driving force of evolution leading to accumulation of HHCBEs for billions of years. We further deduce three progressive mechanisms of evolution including natural selection from the driving force. We hence establish the CBE evolutionary theory (CBEET) which reinterprets the major aspects of evolution in a comprehensive and comprehensible way. The CBEET provides novel explanations for natural selection, origin of life (abiogenesis), macroevolution, sympatric speciation, and evolutionary tempos. It suggests that evolution is driven hierarchy-wise by thermodynamics and favors fitness and diversity. It elucidates that altruism, collaboration, and obeying rules with balanced freedom are important throughout the CBE evolution which includes chemical evolution, biological evolution, and animal group evolution. The CBEET refutes several erroneous views including negative entropy and survival of the fittest. It integrates with research advances in multiple disciplines and links up laws of physics, evolution in biology, and harmonious development of human society.

Unpaid family caregivers must consider the economic trade-off between caregiving and paid employment. Prior literature has suggested labour force participation (LFP) to decline with caregiving intensity, but no study has evaluated this relationship by accounting for the presence of both kinks and discontinuities. Here we used respondents of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study baseline survey who were non-farming, of working-age (aged 45-60) and had a young grandchild and/or a parent/parent-in-law. For women and men separately, a caregiving threshold-adjusted probit model was used to assess the association between LFP and weekly unpaid caregiving hours. Instrumental variables were used to rule out the endogeneity of caregiving hours. Of the 3,718 respondents in the analysis, for men, LFP was significantly and inversely associated with caregiving that involved neither discontinuities nor kinks. For women, a kink was identified at the caregiving threshold of 8 hours per week such that before 8 hours, each caregiving hour was associated with an increase of 0.0257 in the marginal probability of LFP, but each hour thereafter was associated with a reduction of 0.0014 in the marginal probability of LFP. These results have implications for interventions that simultaneously advance policies of health, social care and labour force.

The energy E takes the place of the gravitational mass m_G to produce gravity [1]. We wonder whether the inertial mass m_i in the inertial force is also replaced by E. The experiments to measure the inertial force and weight of a carrier are presented. Now we can test the principle of equivalence and study foundations of physics in condensed matter.

A recently developed thermodynamic theory for the determination of the driving force of crystallization and the crystal–melt surface tension is applied to the ice–water system employing the new Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater TEOS-10. The deviations of approximative formulations of the driving force and the surface tension from the exact reference properties are quantified, showing that the proposed simplifications are applicable for low to moderate undercooling and pressure differences to the respective equilibrium state of water. The TEOS-10 based predictions of the ice crystallization rate revealed pressure-induced deceleration of ice nucleation with an increasing pressure, and acceleration of ice nucleation by pressure decrease. This result is in, at least, qualitative agreement with laboratory experiments and computer simulations. Both the temperature and pressure dependencies of the ice–water surface tension were found to be in line with the le Chatelier–Braun principle, in that the surface tension decreases upon increasing degree of metastability of water (by decreasing temperature and pressure), which favors nucleation to move the system back to a stable state. The reason for this behavior is discussed. Finally, the Kauzmann temperature of the ice–water system was found to amount TK=116K, which is far below the temperature of homogeneous freezing. The Kauzmann pressure was found to amount pK=-212MPa, suggesting favor of homogeneous freezing upon exerting a negative pressure on the liquid. In terms of thermodynamic properties entering the theory, the reason for the negative Kauzmann pressure is the higher mass density of water in comparison to ice at the melting point.

The center vortex model of quantum chromodynamic states that vortices, closed color-magnetic flux, percolate the vacuum. Vortices are seen as the relevant excitations of the vacuum, causing confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. In an appropriate gauge, as direct maximal center gauge, vortices are detected by projecting onto the center degrees of freedom. Such gauges suffer from Gribov copy problems: different local maxima of the corresponding gauge functional can result in different predictions of the string tension. By using non-trivial center regions, that is, regions whose boundary evaluates to a non-trivial center element, a resolution of this issue seems possible. We use such non-trivial center regions to guide simulated annealing procedures, preventing an underestimation of the string tension in order to resolve the Gribov copy problem.

The automation of welding processes requires the use of automated systems and equipment, in many cases industrial robotic systems, to carry out welding processes that previously required human intervention. Automation in the industry offers numerous advantages, such as increased efficiency and productivity, cost reduction, improved product quality, increased flexibility and safety, and greater adaptability of companies to market changes. The field of welding automation is currently undergoing a period of profound changes due to a combination of technological, regulatory, and economic factors worldwide. Nowadays, the most relevant aspect of the welding industry is to meet customer requirements by satisfying their needs. To achieve this, the automation of the welding process through sensors and control algorithms ensures the quality of the parts and prevents errors such as porosity, unfused areas, deformations, excessive heat, etc. This paper proposes an intelligent and adaptive system based on the measurement of welding joints using laser scanning and the subsequent analysis of the obtained point cloud to adapt the welding trajectories.

This manuscript explores unmanned aerial vehicle DC motor control performance efficacy of deterministic artificial intelligence in comparison to model-following adaptation, particularly a direct self-tuner with filtering. The deterministic artificial intelligence model made use of self-awareness statements to overcome error in response to permutations of the multi-duty cycle square wave that served as the system input. It can be seen that (despite equivalently powerful estimation techniques) deterministic artificial intelligence provided far superior results: a reduction in peak initial transient error of 55%, and a mean error reduction over 81% with over 65% reduction in error standard deviation compared to a state-of-the-art nonlinear adaptive control method. Deterministic artificial intelligence also was able to very closely track at the switching of the input control, while the benchmark nonlinear adaptive control failed to respond as quickly at these points.

This study determines the threshold for the computational rate of actuator motor controllers for unmanned underwater vehicles necessary to accurately follow discontinuous square wave commands. Motors must track challenging square-wave inputs, and identification of key computational rates permit application of deterministic artificial intelligence (D.A.I.) to achieve tracking to a machine-precision degree of accuracy in direct comparison to other state-of-art approaches. All modeling approaches are validated in MATLAB simulations where the motor process is discretized at varying step-sizes (inversely proportional to computational rate). At a large step-size (fast computational rate), discrete D.A.I. shows a mean error more than three times larger than that of a ubiquitous model-following approach. Yet, at a smaller step size (slower computational rate), the mean error decreases by a factor of 10, only three percent larger than that of continuous D.A.I. Hence, the performance of discrete D.A.I. is critically affected by the sampling period for discretization of the system equations and computational rate. Discrete D.A.I. should be avoided when small step-size discretization is unavailable. In fact, continuous D.A.I. has surpassed all modeling approaches which makes it the safest and most viable solution to future commercial applications in unmanned underwater vehicles.

Using data-driven models to solve predictive maintenance problems has been prevalent for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). However, such models fail to solve two tasks that OEMs are interested in: (1) Making the well-built failure prediction models working on existing scenarios (vehicles, working conditions) adaptive to target scenarios. (2) Finding out the failure causes, furthermore, determining whether a model generates failure predictions based on reasonable causes. This paper investigates a comprehensive architecture towards making the predictive maintenance system adaptive and interpretable by proposing (1) an ensemble model dealing with time-series data consisting of a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network and Gaussian threshold to achieve failure prediction one week in advance and (2) an online transfer learning algorithm and a meta learning algorithm, which render existing models adaptive to new vehicles with limited data volumes. (3) Furthermore, the Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) interpretation tool and super-feature methods are applied to interpret individual and general failure causes. Vehicle data from Isuzu Motors, Ltd., are adopted to validate our method, which include time-series data and histogram data. The proposed ensemble model yields predictions with 100% accuracy for our test data on engine stalling problem and is more rapidly adaptive to new vehicles with smaller error following application of either online transfer learning or the meta learning method. The interpretation methods help elucidate the global and individual failure causes, confirming the model credibility.

In this paper, a mathematical and physical interpretation of the length and the angle of the catenary curve made by the anchor chains was implemented, and the safety of an anchored vessel was reviewed. So far, holding force has been calculated approximately when the angle of the catenary curve of the anchor chain to the seafloor is 0°. In this study, the holding force equation was strictly derived for the case of anchor dragging. In addition, the equations for the angle and length of the catenary curve were mathematically derived when the anchor dragging occurs. The holding force equation derived in this paper are expected to help provide guidelines in vessel design or increase the safety of anchoring.

The pinning force density FpJc,B=Jc×B (where Jc is the critical current density and B is the applied magnetic field) is one of the main parameters that characterize the resilience of a superconductor to carry a dissipative-free transport current in an applied magnetic field. Kramer (1973 J. Appl. Phys. 44 1360), and Dew-Hughes (1974 Phil. Mag. 30 293) proposed a widely used scaling law for the pinning force density amplitude: FpB=Fp,max×p+qp+qppqq×BBc2p×1-BBc2q, where Fp,max, Bc2, p, and q are free-fitting parameters. Since the late 1970-s till now, several research groups have reported experimental data on the dependence of Fp,max on the average grain size, d, in Nb3Sn-based conductors. Godeke (2006 Supercond. Sci. Techn. 19 R68) proposed that the dependence obeys the law Fp,maxd=A×ln1d+B. However, this scaling law has several problems, for instance, the logarithm is taken from a non-dimensionless variable, and Fp,maxd&lt;0 for large grain sizes, and Fp,maxd→∞ for d→0. Here, we reanalysed the full inventory of publicly available Fp,maxd data for Nb3Sn conductors and found that the dependence can be described by Fp,maxd=Fp,max0×exp-dδ law, where the characteristic length, δ, varies within a remarkably narrow range, that is, δ=175±13 nm, for samples fabricated by different technologies. The interpretation of the result is based on the idea that the in-field supercurrent flows within a thin surface layer (thickness of δ) near the grain boundary surfaces (similar to London’s law, where the self-field supercurrent flows within a thin surface layer with a thickness of the London penetration depth, λ, and the surface is a superconductor-vacuum surface). An alternative interpretation is that δ represents the characteristic length of the exponential decay flux pinning potential from the dominant defects in Nb3Sn superconductors, which are grain boundaries.

Cell migration is essential for physiological, pathological and biomedical processes such as, in embryogenesis, wound healing, immune response, cancer metastasis, tumour invasion and inflammation. In light of this, quantifying mechanical properties during the process of cell migration is of great interest in experimental sciences, yet few theoretical approaches in this direction have been studied. In this work, we propose a theoretical and computational approach based on the optimal control of geometric partial differential equations to estimate cell membrane forces associated with cell polarisation during migration. Specifically, cell membrane forces are inferred or estimated by fitting a mathematical model to a sequence of images, allowing us to capture dynamics of the cell migration. Our approach offers a robust and potentially accurate framework to compute geometric mechanical membrane forces associated with cell polarisation during migration and also yields geometric information of independent interest, we illustrate one such example that involves quantifying cell proliferation levels which are associated with cell division, cell fusion or cell death.

This paper proposes a contact force controller for a constrained flexible manipulator in three-dimensional motion. This controller used the conversion formula obtained empirically and experimental results showed the effectiveness of the proposed contact force controller. First, the manipulator was operated with the tip of the second link restrained, then, time response of the root strain, joint angles and contact force were used to derive the relational between the three quantities. The effectiveness of the relational expression was verified by conducting a target contact force tracking experiment by inputting the angle from the relational expression. The contact force control using the strain feedback method was proposed with the strain amount estimated from the target contact force as the target value, and its effectiveness was verified by experiments. From the results obtained, controller using the strain feedback method was designed for the purpose of controlling the contact force at the tip of a flexible manipulator with two links and three degrees of freedom that performs three-dimensional spatial motion, and its effectiveness was shown by comparison with the contact force feedback method.

On the basis of the force and safety factor analysis of traditional retaining wall, a new analytical method of force and displacement of slope is suggested, the numerical theoretical solution of the stress distribution of the sliding body can be obtained under the conditions, which the stresses distribution are satisfied with the differential equilibrium equations, the boundary conditions, the compatibility equation and the macroscopic equilibrium equations. The interface stresses between the sliding body and the retaining wall are continuous, the theoretical solution of retaining wall stress distributions can be gotten, while the stress differential equilibrium equation, the compatibility equation, macroscopic force and moment balance equations are satisfied. The strain and displacement solutions can be obtained by using Duncan Chang and Hooke constitutive equations for the slope and the retaining wall respectively. The transfer station of landfill in the Guandukou Town of Badong County is taken as an example, the results of the sliding body and retaining wall analysis show: The stress and strain solutions of a slope and a retaining wall can be obtained by the proposed method, the forces between the retaining wall and the sliding body include shear stress and normal stress, and the stress distributions change with the deformation of the sliding body, the shape and material of retaining wall can be optimized according to the calculation results，it is feasible for the proposed analysis method of slope with retaining wall design to be run many years.

This paper first explains the theory of the origin of force from a new perspective, explaining that the origin of all forces is caused by the "missing of energy in the time dimension" (non-conservation in a certain period of time), and constructs a unified theory of force on this basis. Then, through the unified theory of force, the following phenomena are reinterpreted: (1) The common origin of the inverse square law of gravitation and electromagnetic force; (2) The origin of the repulsive force of electrons and protons at small distances; (3) The mystery of the rotation curve of galaxies and the new explanation of "dark matter"; (4) explain the origin of the magnetic field; (5) Predict that moving magnets have the same radiation effect as charged particles (electron magnetic moments also have radiation effects); (6) Reinterpret Maxwell's displacement current; (7) Reinterpret synchrotron radiation and bremsstrahlung; (8) Explain that the strong and weak forces are short-range forces; (9) Predict the true structure of black holes and the origin of gravitational waves;(10) Possible explanation for the origin of the speed of light.

Particle-mediated elasticity/viscoelasticity imaging has potential to expand the elasticity imaging field, as it can provide accurate and local tissue elastic properties as well as density, Poisson’s ratio, and viscosity. Here, we investigated elasticity imaging based on the use of small particles located within the tissue and at the tissue interface exposed to a static and dynamic external load. First, we discuss elasticity/viscoelasticity imaging methods based on the use of particles (bubbles and rigid spheres) located within the tissue. Elasticity/viscoelasticity imaging techniques based on the use of particles (bubbles, rigid and soft spheres) located at the tissue interface are then presented. Based on new advances, we updated some of the models for the responses of the particles located within the tissue and at the tissue interface available in the literature. Finally, we compared the mathematical models for the particles located within the tissue and at the tissue interface and evaluated the elasticity/viscoelasticity imaging methods based on the use of small particles. Therefore, instead of the use of the term elasticity imaging, we suggest the use of the term viscoelasticity imaging.

Reducing overall food intake or lowering the proportion of protein relative to other macronutrients, can extend lifespan in diverse organisms. A number of mechanistic theories have been developed to explain this phenomenon, mostly assuming that the molecules connecting diet to lifespan are evolutionarily conserved. A recent study using Drosophila melanogaster females has pinpointed a single essential micronutrient that can explain how lifespan is changed by dietary restriction. Here, we propose a likely mechanism for this observation, which involves a trade-off between lifespan and reproduction, but in a manner that is conditional on the dietary supply of an essential micronutrient – a sterol. Importantly, these observations argue against previous evolutionary theories that rely on constitutive resource reallocation or damage directly inflicted by reproduction. Instead, they are compatible with a model in which the inverse relationship between lifespan and food level is caused by the consumer suffering from varying degrees of malnutrition when maintained on lab food. The data also indicate that animals on different lab foods may suffer from different nutritional imbalances and that the mechanisms by which dietary restriction benefits the lifespan of different species may vary. This means that translating the mechanistic findings from lab animals to humans will not be simple and should be interpreted in light of the range of challenges that have shaped each organism’s lifespan in the wild and the composition of the natural diets they would feed on.

Biological systems often need to operate in complex environments where conditions can rapidly change. This is possible due to their inherent ability to sense changes and adapt their behavior in response. Here, we detail recent advances in the creation of synthetic genetic parts and circuits whose behaviors can be dynamically tuned through a variety of intra- and extra-cellular signals. We show how this capability lays the foundation for implementing control engineering schemes in living cells and allows for the creation of biological systems that are able to self-adapt, ensuring their functionality is maintained in the face of varying environmental and physiological conditions. We end by discussing some of the broader implications of this technology for the safe deployment of synthetic biology.

In this paper a protection scheme is provided to protect microgrid by considering the problems that are generated by addition of distributed generators to distribution networks and change these networks from passive to active. At first, changes in microgrid conditions that can affect short-circuit current is explained. Then Based on these changes, an algorithm is proposed to update relays settings. The algorithm can be used for both instantaneous and inverse time relays. In this protection scheme, central unit has no place and relays are responsible for monitoring microgrid and update their settings. In other words, this protection scheme is an adaptive and decentralized microgrid protection scheme. Instantaneous overcurrent relays are used in this paper. To avoid storing large amounts of setting data in relays memory, a method for calculating pickup current of instantaneous relay is provided. Since digital relays used, a new characteristic curve for instantaneous relay for better performance in the field of backup protection is defined. This new characteristic curve has two peakup currents: one of them for main protection and the other one for backup protection. Then coordination of instantaneous relay using the new characteristic curve is explained. At the end, this protection scheme is implemented on a microgrid.

This paper describes the design and development of an active device that was applied to shoulder rotation rehabilitation. It implements a force control in a similar way to the haptic devices that reflect a force on the user’s hand according to the rehabilitation parameters. This device was tested with patients, combining clinician manipulation and programmed exercises. The results were excellent, given that the range of movement of the shoulder increased in most of the pa-tients. The results of the Usability Scale questionnaire were also promising.

The second law of thermodynamics states the increase of entropy, ΔS > 0, for real processes from state A to state B at constant energy from chemistry over biological life and engines to cosmic events. The connection of entropy to information, phase-space and heat is helpful, but does not immediately convince observers of the validity and basis of the second law. This gave grounds for finding a rigorous, but more easily acceptable reformulation. Here we show using statistical mechanics that this principle is equivalent to a force law ⟨⟨f⟩⟩> 0 in systems where mass centres and forces can be identified. The sign of this net force - the average mean force along a path from A to B - determines the direction of the process. The force law applies to a wide range of processes from machines to chemical reactions. The explanation of irreversibility by a driving force appears more plausible than the traditional formulation as it emphasizes the cause instead of the effect of motions.

Through a modern derivation of Planck's formula for the entropy of an arbitrary beam of photons we derive a general expression for the entropy production due to the irreversible process of the absorption of an arbitrary incident photon spectrum in material and its dissipation into an infrared-shifted grey-body emitted spectrum, the rest being reflected or transmitted. Employing the framework of Classical Irreversible Thermodynamic theory, we define the generalized thermodynamic flow as the flow of photons from the incident beam into the material and the generalized thermodynamic force is then just the entropy production divided by the photon flow which is the entropy production per unit photon at a given wavelength. We compare the entropy production under sunlight of different inorganic and organic materials (water, desert, leaves and forests) and show that organic materials are the greater entropy producing materials. Intriguingly, plant and phytoplankton pigments (including chlorophyll) have peak absorption exactly where entropy production through photon dissipation is maximal for our solar spectrum $430<\lambda<550$ nm, while photosynthetic efficiency is maximal between 600 and 700 nm. These results suggest that the evolution of pigments, plants and ecosystems has been towards optimizing entropy production rather than photosynthesis. We propose using the wavelength dependence of global entropy production as a biosignature for discovering life on planets of other stars.

The focus of recent research shifts towards complex ‘whole organism’ responses (i.e., in multiple functional traits) in adaptation to or to defend against stressors under complex environmental conditions. This increasing complexity is challenging to analyse and demands sophisticated tools to drive meaningful conclusions from those data. Trait-based regression models, multivariate analyses, like principal component analyses, and plasticity indices can be used to tackle challenges with those complex investigations. But those methods have substantial limitations, like the need for high sample size, multi-dimensionality of results or the need for trait coordination in high-dimensional space, or the calculation on the population level, which might buffer or cover the de facto occurring individual effects. To improve and simplify studies on ‘whole organism’ responses, analyses, and their interpretation, we developed the Index for Adaptive Responses. This straightforward framework can unite all traits of an organism in one number. A newly developed transformation method, included in this framework, comprises a normalisation and standardisation to a baseline or control without changing the data or variance structure of the original data. We assessed the performance and accuracy of the framework with an application in an extensive predator-prey case study, with simulations and application examples using literature data. We show that the Index for Adaptive Responses respects adaptations as well as maladaptations and outperforms established approaches. The framework is robust against outliers and non-gaussian distribution. We further show that the qualitative prediction of the adaptiveness of included traits is highly accurate, even under challenging conditions, e.g., low replicate numbers. Functions and algorithms of the framework are provided with an R package but can easily be translated into other programming languages. The Index for Adaptive Responses will simplify future research on complex adaptive responses and improves our understanding of these responses’ ecological as well as evolutionary implications.

Forensic anthropologists play a key role in skeletal trauma analysis and commonly use macroscopic features to distinguish between trauma types. However, this approach can be challenging, particularly in cases of highly comminuted or incompletely recovered fractures. Histological analysis of microscopic fracture characteristics in fractured bones may thus help provide additional information on trauma type and bone fracture biomechanics in general. This study analysed the extent of microcrack damage to osteons in long bones with blunt force trauma (BFT) and gunshot trauma (GST), from both traumatic death cases and post-mortem experimental fractures. We identified four types of osteonal damage (OD). In traumatic death cases, OD affecting the inside of the osteon and compromising the Haversian canal (type 1) was found to be indicative of BFT. Moreover, OD affecting the cement line (type 3) and interstitial lamellae (type 4) was more common in the GST samples. OD affecting the inside of the osteon without compromising the Haversian canal (type 2) was not found to be indicative of either trauma type. In cases of experimental fractures, our study revealed that post-mortem fractures in dry bone samples featured the highest amount of OD, particularly of type 4. This study also found that the experimentally produced GST featured similar OD pattern to GST death cases. These findings support our hypothesis that there are distinct osteonal damage patterns in human long bones with BFT and GST, which are of relevant value for trauma analysis in forensic anthropology.

The bipolar mitotic spindle drives accurate chromosome segregation by capturing the kinetochore and pulling each set of sister chromatids to the opposite poles. In this review, we describe recent findings on the multiple pathways leading to bipolar spindle formation in fission yeast and discuss these results from a broader perspective. Roles of four mitotic kinesins (Kinesin-5, Kinesin-6, Kinesin-12 and Kinesin-14) in spindle assembly are depicted, and how a group of microtubule-associated proteins, sister chromatid cohesion and the kinetochore collaborates with these motors is shown. We have paid special attention to the molecular pathways that render otherwise essential Kinesin-5 to become non-essential: how cells build bipolar mitotic spindles without the need for Kinesin-5 and where the alternate forces come from are considered. We highlight the force balance for bipolar spindle assembly and explain how outward and inward forces are generated by various ways, in which the proper fine-tuning of microtubule dynamics plays a crucial role. Overall, these new pathways have illuminated remarkable plasticity and adaptability of spindle mechanics. Kinesin molecules are regarded as prospective targets for cancer chemotherapy and many specific inhibitors have been developed. However, several hurdles have arisen against their clinical implementation. This review provides insight into possible strategies to overcome these challenges.

The landscape of business intelligence (BI) is marked by rapid growth, extensive research, and practical implementations, reflecting its sustained relevance in modern business strategies. This paper delves into the dynamics of BI, particularly focusing on the interplay between maturity and agility. While BI maturity emphasizes optimization and predefined goals, BI agility prioritizes adaptability and response to change. The paper highlights the contradictions between these concepts, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach in BI strategy formulation.The role of organizational culture in fostering BI agility is explored through literature review and interviews with BI professionals. Key insights include the necessity of an open culture for effective BI utilization, clear strategic vision, decision delegation, information sharing, business-IT cooperation, and a learning-oriented mindset. These cultural factors contribute significantly to BI effectiveness and the ability to navigate dynamic business landscapes. The paper proposes pillars of agile maturity supported by an open organizational culture, including efficient communication, information integration, creative problem-solving, and close collaboration between business and IT. These pillars underscore the importance of a flexible and open mindset in navigating BI challenges and ensuring sustained value. Empirical validation and further research are suggested to deepen our understanding of the impact of organizational culture on BI agility and effectiveness.

. Interconnected control systems (ICS) widely apply to various technical systems. ICS has a complex description. Therefore, simplified models use, which the specifics of an object do not always reflect. So, the problem of synthesizing mathematical models is topical. The work purpose is to develop an approach to obtaining models in conditions of incomplete a priori information. We use an adaptive approach. As examples, two-channel systems (TCS) with cross-links and identical channels consider, and a method for mathematical model design. We consider the system with asymmetric cross-links and evaluate their impact on properties of an adaptive identification system. Approach proposed to assessing the TCS identifiability with cross-links. The excitation constancy influence on TСS parameter estimates is studied. A generalization of the proposed approach is given for an interconnected system.

The Bunyavirales order includes at least fourteen families with diverse but related viruses, which are transmitted to vertebrate hosts by arthropod or rodent vectors. These viruses are responsible for an increasing number of outbreaks worldwide and represent a threat to public health. Infection in humans can be asymptomatic, or it may present with a range of conditions from a mild, febrile illness to severe hemorrhagic syndromes and/or neurological complications. There is a need to develop safe and effective vaccines, a process requiring better understanding of the adaptive immune responses involved during infection. This review highlights the most recent findings regarding T cell and antibody responses to the five bunyavirus families with known human pathogens (Peribunyaviridae, Phenuiviridae, Hantaviridae, Nairoviridae, and Arenaviridae). Future studies that define and characterize mechanistic correlates of protection against bunyavirus infections or disease will help inform the development of effective vaccines.

Routing a person through a traffic network presents a tension between selecting a fixed route that is easy to navigate and selecting an aggressively adaptive route that minimizes the expected travel time. We propose to create non-aggressive adaptive routes in the middle-ground seeking the best of both these extremes. Specifically, these routes still adapt to changing traffic conditions, however we limit the number of adjustments made in the route. This improves the user experience, by providing a continuum of options between saving travel time and minimizing navigation. We design strategies to model single and multiple route adjustments, and investigate enumerative techniques to solve these models. To alleviate the intractability with handling real-life traffic data, we develop efficient algorithms with easily computable lower and upper bounds. We finally present computational experiments highlighting the benefits of limited adaptability in terms of reducing the expected travel time.

Most mature companies have started some kind of “transformation”, either digital, or agile transformations, to cope with changes in the environment, yet most fail, ending up delivering nothing or just one more reorganization. We postulate that considering the Organization as a self-aware Complex Adaptative System (CAS) is paramount, as the common conception (Industrial: mechanistic and predictive) results in bringing the systems in a frozen or defensive mode. Stimulating the system enables us to use its adaptative power to develop new capabilities, and all layers should be tackled simultaneously, to prevent the system from collapsing back into its original state. To ensure this, it is necessary to create a seed per level, and a mechanism to propagate the transformation, with a focus on development instead of growth, that is qualitative change rather than quantitative. A common vocabulary should also be provided, so conversations can occur at every level. Finally, changing mindsets is key, and both concepts and techniques should be provided as enablers to the adequate mindset level. We detail one such transformation that resulted in distributed leadership and more intrinsic motivation, providing both an account of the transformation itself and a model to read it.

Self-report measurement is frequently used in human sports to assess training adaptations [1, 2]. This is a technique novel to the equestrian sport. The aim of this study was to describe how elite event riders of Germany evaluate their own fitness as well as that of their horses for the entire duration of an eventing season. Additionally, correlations with possible influencing external factors such as type of training or duration of grazing were also investigated. Short online questionnaires were used to allow eight riders to describe the training of their horses. Five criteria (general performance, ability to concentrate, general state of mind, general muscular condition and emotional wellbeing) were used to assess both, their horse's, as well as their own wellbeing. A 1-10 rating scale was used to score each criterion resulting in an average of 38 points out of 50 (maximum wellbeing) for horse (Std. dev. 0.55) and rider (Std. dev. 0.65) respectively. A total of 120 questionnaires were analysed. A correlation could be demonstrated (Spearman's correlation coefficient = 0.5) between rider and horse score, whereby it only became a linear correlation above 30 points. In addition, the horse score correlates positively with its success at competitions. While the horses were rated similarly throughout the season, the riders’ perceived welfare was higher in the middle of the season compared with the beginning and end of the season. Regularly turned-out horses resulted in higher horse scores (Linear mixed model, p=0,04, n=120). It can be concluded that the self-report measurement of fatigue and wellbeing can be a useful tool for trainers and riders to better determine the horse’s fatigue and recovery. It should be noted that external factors influence both, rider and horse assessment.

Modern imaging strategies are paramount to studying living systems such as cells, bacteria, and fungi and their response to pathogens, toxicants, and nanomaterials as modulated by exposure and environmental factors. The need to understand the processes and mechanisms of damage, healing and cell survivability of living systems continues to motivate the development of alternative imaging strategies. Of particular interest is the use of label-free techniques that minimize interference of biological processes by foreign marking substances and reduce intense light exposure and potential photo-toxicity effects. This review focus on the potential synergic capabilities of atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a well-developed and robust imaging strategy with demonstrated applications to unravel intimate details in biomedical applications, with the label-free, fast, and enduring Holotomographic Microscopy (HT) strategy. We first review the operating principles that form the basis for the complementary details provided by these techniques regarding the surface and internal information provided by HT and AFM is essential and complimentary for the development of several biomedical areas studying the interaction mechanisms of nanomaterials with living organisms. First, AFM can provide superb resolution on surface morphology and biomechanical characterization. Second, the quantitative phase capabilities of HT enable superb modeling and quantification of the volume, surface area, protein content, and mass density of the main components of cells and microorganisms, including morphology of cells in microbiological systems. These capabilities result from directly quantifying refractive index changes without requiring fluorescent markers or chemicals. As such, HT is ideally suited for long-term monitoring of living organisms in conditions close to their natural settings. We present a case-based review of the principal uses of both techniques and their essential contributions to nanomedicine and nanotoxicology, emphasizing cancer and infectious disease control. The synergic impact of the sequential use of these complementary strategies provides a clear drive for adopting these techniques as interdependent fundamental tools.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the horizontal force and contribution of shoulder horizontal adductor and elbow extensor muscles activity during wide and narrow grip bench press (BP) in various conditions, such as resistance trained/non-trained, concentric/eccentric and muscle fatigue/non-fatigue.　We measured the horizontal force on the bar and the electromyographic (EMG) muscle activity of pectoralis major (PM) and triceps brachii (TB) during 10RM BP with wide grip (81cm) and narrow grip (40cm)　in 7　resistance trained men and 7 non-trained men. The all-reps average of the horizontal to vertical force ratio both in resistance trained and non-trained subjects was about 30% outward for the wide grip, and about 10% inward for the narrow grip. The EMG contribution ratio PM/TB shows no significant differences between narrow and wide grip in all evaluated conditions except in non-trained subjects muscle fatigue eccentric phase. Both resistance trained and non-trained subjects did not push the bar straight upward, and the EMG PM/TB was almost unchanged by hand width. The direction adjustment of the force on the bar that achieves almost the same muscle activity degree of the shoulder and elbow joints might be optimal BP kinetics.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, autoimmune disease that mainly affects the central nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerve. This disease can cause clinical symptoms such as cognitive decline, muscle weakness, spasms, and fatigue in patients, and the onset tends to be younger. Current medication can only prevent or alleviate symptoms, so early diagnosis of this disease can increase patients' chances of treatment. Although the use of nuclear magnetic resonance detection can improve the efficiency of early auxiliary diagnosis, it still requires experienced doctors to spend too much time and energy on comprehensive judgment. To reduce the time cost and improve the efficiency of multiple sclerosis diagnosis, this article proposes a detection and recognition algorithm for multiple sclerosis based on wavelet entropy and self-adaptive particle swarm optimization. Firstly, a triple discrete wavelet transform is performed on the brain image of multiple sclerosis, and then 10 wavelet entropies are extracted from the decomposed wavelet subbands, which can reduce the feature dimensions of the image; Then, the algorithm of self-adaptive particle swarm optimization is used to optimize the feedforward neural network, in order to obtain the optimal connection weights and thresholds during the training process. The result of the model is with an average sensitivity of 92.29±1.89, specificity of 92.54±0.67, precision of 92.48±0.59, accuracy of 92.42±0.88, and F1 score of 84.85±1.74, Matthews correlation coefficient of 92.37±0.96, and Fowlkes223 Mallows Index of 92.38±0.96. The experimental results indicate that this algorithm has a very important data support role in detecting multiple sclerosis.

One of the most leading causes of death worldwide is Colorectal cancer(CRC). Polyp segmentation is the most important detected measure for preventing CRC. However, there is still a missing rate for diminutive polyps and multiple ones. In order to solve the phenomenon, we propose to introduce auxiliary attention module(AAM) that can enhance the learning of features related to multiple and diminutive polyps by focusing more on the located and detailed information. Meanwhile, we design to decrease missed rate of multiple and diminutive polyps by implementing an area adaptive loss(AAL) which adapts the weight according to the area and the number of polyps. Our proposed novel AAM and AAL concentrates on training with hard examples and localized information. To evaluate the effectiveness and generalization ability of our proposed model, We utilize three different datasets of variable sizes and a cross dataset. Our proposed method achieves the best results on the Kvasir-SEG dataset, the CVC-ClinicDB dataset and the cross dataset, particularly for the Kvasir-Sessile dataset consisting of small,flat and diminutive polyps. Extensive experimental results show that our proposed DoubleAANet surpass the performance of all existing state-of-the-art segmentation methods.

Sensor enabled big data and Artificial Intelligence platforms has the potential to address global socio-economic trends related to the livestock production sector through advances in the digitization of precision livestock farming. The increased interest in animal welfare, the likely reduction in the number of animals in relation to population growth in the coming decade and the growing demand for animal proteins pose an acute challenge to prioritizing animal welfare on the one hand while maximizing the efficiency of production systems on the other. To stimulate a sustainable, digital, and resilient recovery of the agricultural and livestock industrial sector, there is an urgent need for testing and develop new ideas and products such as wearable sensors. By validating and demonstrating a fully functional wearable sensor prototype within an operational environment on the livestock farm that includes a miniaturized animal-borne biosensor and an artificial intelligence (AI) based data acquisition and processing platform, the unmet current needs can be fulfilled. The expected quantifiable results from wearable biosensors will demonstrate that the digitization technology can perform acceptably within the performance parameters specified by the agricultural sector and under operational conditions, to measurably improve livestock productivity and health. There is a need for a multimodal, digitized, automated biosensor and health monitoring platform containing AI algorithms for optimized stress and disease prediction in farm animals. An experimental development of non-invasive wearable and wireless physiological sensor networks that can be deployed in agricultural environments would allow for real-time extraction and integration of physiological data and display on decision support dashboards for livestock workers. By testing the effectiveness of the system in generating meaningful longitudinal data for further research into physiological and behavioral characteristics of farm animals, novel insights about animal welfare can be developed. The successful implementation of the digital wearable sensor networks would provide actionable real-time information on animal health status and can be deployed directly on the livestock farm, which will strengthen the green and digital recovery of the economy due to the significant innovation potential. Continuous monitoring of animal health and physiological functioning promotes more environmentally and socially acceptable developmental pathways. Once demonstrated, the portable animal health monitoring platform will close a critical gap in digitized livestock farming and position the agricultural industry as a frontrunner in the sector of farm animal monitoring and measurement systems. The multimodal wearable sensor-driven AI approach is expected to significantly improve the effectiveness of livestock decision support systems and the selection of resilient animals for the next generation and provide predictive data for end-users in livestock farming.

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation about target detecting with passive sonar in Persian Gulf. Detecting propagated sounds in the water is one of the basic challenges of the researchers in sonar field. This challenge will be complex in shallow water (like Persian Gulf) and noise less vessels. Generally, in passive sonar the targets are detected by sonar equation (with constant threshold) which increase the detection error in shallow water. Purpose of this study is proposed a new method for detecting targets in passive sonars using adaptive threshold. In this method, target signal (sound) is processed in time and frequency domain. For classifying, Bayesian classification is used and prior distribution is estimated by Maximum Likelihood algorithm. Finally, target was detected by combining the detection points in both domains using LMS adaptive filter. Results of this paper has showed that proposed method has improved true detection rate about 27% compare other the best detection method.

Although evolutionary theory has yet to furnish a comprehensive rationale for the underlying mechanism of natural selection, it is pertinent to note that the phenomenon transcends the confines of biological systems, exhibiting analogous patterns in physical systems as well. Specifically, isolated and closed systems tend to evolve towards states of progressively increasing entropy. In scenarios where multiple paths for entropy increase are accessible, such systems tend to favor combinations of paths that exhibit the most rapid entropy increase rates. Among the various processes in nature, life activities constitute a salient means of achieving entropy increase. Genetic variation within organisms generates individuals that vary in their rates of entropy increase. As these organisms interact, compete and combine, they form diverse combinations of entropy-increasing pathways. Nature, in turn, selects among these combinations, favoring those that culminate in the fastest entropy increase, thereby propelling the evolution of life. Essentially, the evolution of life is an ongoing exploration of diverse combinations of pathways that maximize entropy increase across various energy pools. Amidst continuous genetic variation and the selective pressure imposed by nature for maximum entropy production rates, information accumulates, leading to a corresponding acceleration in the rate of entropy increase. This natural selection, which favors maximizing the entropy at the fastest possible rate, serves as the ultimate driving force for the origin and evolution of life.

This paper proposes the application of force-projecting bilateral control to a master-follower teleoperation system with a pneumatic manipulator on the follower side, and evaluates its effectiveness. The proposed method directly projects the operating force on the master side to the driving force on the follower side, eliminating the need for both position control and external force detection on the follower side, thereby solving the problem of low rigidity and response delay of pneumatic manipulators and providing highly stable sensor-less force presentation against variable environments. In this study, dynamic response analyses of a 1-DOF master-follower system were performed by numerical simulation using a linear system model, followed by experimental verification by implementing an actual system with an external force estimator. The results showed that the proposed force-projecting bilateral control has significantly higher positioning rigidity and better force control stability than the conventional force-reflecting bilateral control. A theoretical consideration was also given using equivalent transformation of force transfer functions to provide evidence for the high stability.

Holding an object by clamping force is a fundamental phenomena, layered or laminated architectures with internal sliding features are essential mechanism in natural and man-made structural system. In this paper, we combine the layered architecture and clamping mechanism to form a multilayered clamp and study the clamping force with internal friction. Our investigations show that the clamping force and energy dissipation are very mich depend on the number of layers, its geometry and elasticity, as well as internal friction. The central goal of studying the covered book is not only to predict the clamping force of the clamp, but also as a representative case to help finding some clue on the universal behaviours of multilayered architectures with internal friction.

The need for miniaturized shear force sensors is expanding, particularly for biomedical applications. Examples include measuring interfacial shear stresses between a human and an external device (e.g., footwear or a prosthesis). However, there are considerable challenges in designing a shear sensor for these applications due to the need for a small package, low power requirements, and resistance to interference from motion artifact and electromagnetic fields. This paper presents the design, fabrication, and characterization sensor that measures two-axis shear force by detecting displacement between a color panel and a red, green, and blue light-sensing photodiode. The sensor response to applied displacements and forces was characterized under benchtop testing conditions. We also present the design of a prototype wireless version of the sensor for integration into footwear. The sensor exhibited strong agreement with gold standard measurements for two axis shear displacements (R2>0.99, RMSE≤5.0 µm) and forces (R2>0.99, RMSE≤0.94 N). This performance, along with the sensor’s scalability, miniaturized form, and low power requirements make it well-suited a variety of biomedical applications.

The complex dynamics of the neocortex, the outermost layer of the brain, have been a subject of intense research in neuroscience. Recent studies have suggested that magnetic fields generated by neuronal activity may play a significant role in neocortical dynamics. This paper presents a simplified mathematical model that explores the hypothesized interactions between magnetic dynamos, nondissipative systems, Hamiltonian equations, and the Lorenz force in the context of neocortical dynamics. The proposed model is based on a set of coupled Hamiltonian equations inspired by the Lorenz system, a well-known chaotic dynamical system. The generalized coordinates in the model represent the magnetic field components, while the generalized momenta are related to the electric field components or other relevant quantities. The Hamiltonian equations describe the conservative dynamics of the system, and the coupling terms in the equations are interpreted as representing the interactions between the magnetic and electric field components, analogous to the Lorenz force in electromagnetism. The model is implemented using Python, and the Hamiltonian equations are numerically solved using the odeint function from the scipy.integrate module. The resulting dynamics of the magnetic field components are visualized using matplotlib. While the model is highly simplified and does not capture the full complexity of neocortical dynamics, it serves as a starting point for investigating the potential role of magnetic dynamos and Lorenz force interactions in the brain. The paper discusses the limitations of the current model and highlights the need for further refinements, such as incorporating more realistic biological constraints, considering energy dissipation and compensation mechanisms, and validating the model against experimental data. Future work should focus on developing a more comprehensive and biologically plausible model that integrates the latest findings from neuroscience, physics, and computational modeling. By presenting this simplified Hamiltonian model, the paper aims to stimulate further research and discussion on the potential significance of magnetic dynamos and Lorenz force interactions in neocortical dynamics. The model provides a framework for exploring these hypothesized mechanisms and may guide future experimental and theoretical investigations in this emerging field of neuroscience